The Importance Of The Cycle Of Conflict

Human beings are all individually incredibly unique. This uniqueness is apparent in every experience of a person’s life, but it is the cycle of these unique experiences that connects all human beings. This cycle is defined as the human condition. Furthermore, this cycle is a series of inevitable life aspects that makes up a human being; two of the most obvious being growth and conflict. Within the human condition, growth cannot exist without conflict and conflict cannot exist without growth. The cycle of the human condition also has a cycle of conflict and growth within itself; philosophical pieces of literature and art such as Sorrow Teeming With Light, A Case for a Tragic Optimism, and the Dhammapada all explain instances of conflict and exhibit the importance of finding the light and growing through it.

We can spend our entire lives searching for peace but within this search there is inevitable conflict. Everyone has that huge, dark monster in their lives, as shown in the painting Sorrow Teeming With Light by Gabriel Shaffer. This painting also depicts the great individual battles that we go through in trying to resolve or resist these overall conflicts. With these conflicts, suffering is brought on. Sufferings brought on by conflict include negative guarantees of life. Victor Frankl’s “The Case for a Tragic Optimism” states, “...aspects of human existence which may be circumscribed by: (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death.” But, with these guaranteed sufferings that come from inevitable conflict, how can we as humans pull through and